Hello, back to Sarah again now for a little update on the very amazing Machu Picchu.

Day 15

So, the big day started very early from our hopelessly retro, tile covered hotel in Machu Picchu pueblo (town) with a dash to the bus station to beat the queues and make it up the mountain early. Suprisingly quickly we reached the top and were greeted with our first spectacular views of Machu Picchu, in particular the famous peak that overlooks the ruins which is named Wyanpicchu (or something along those lines....my quecha isn´t that good yet im afraid). However, the best ´picture perfect´views were only available from the top, so yet again we found ourselves battling the heights of Peruvian altitudes and climbing many stairs to reach the top of the ancient terraces. From here (the site of all of photos) the view was really spectacular. The wide terraces, stretched out in stages below and the many stone buildings originally used as temples, palaces and industrial buildings were within view. Towered over by Wyanpicchu the whole place was really quite something to behold. We were able to enjoy all this stretched out in the sun for a couple of hours until we realised that our pale, English skin probably couldnt take any more frazzling and we were forced to leave our amazing spot. Definitely a highly memorable morning though with many, many photos taken! The rest of the day was spent making the somewhat tiresome journey back to Cusco to carry on with our trip. Unfortunately this time we were not treated to the comfortable tourist train, but rather herded like cattle on to a smelly, sticky backpackers train not to be comforted by the little nugget of information that our guide let us in on, in that Peru rail are an English owned company. No suprises it was late then! A good day however was finished off my a little dinner expedition made my myself, Tom and Charlotte which finished in us having the cheapest meal we have had so far in a very Peruvian pizza place way off the tourist track. Who needs a Lonely Planet guide eh?

Day 16

A restful day today in our favourite Peruvian city which is most memorable, or not so as the case may be, for the fantastic night out we had as a group. A funny looking bar lured us inside with the prospect that ´they didnt play salsa´which when you´ve been in Peru for 3 weeks and heard mainly dodgy South American music you will understand. First it was the happy hour that improved the evening but then much to our suprise the very odd looking, seventies inspired attired band turned out to be absolutely amazing! They sounded really good actually and blasted out a mixture of dodgy fifties megamix tunes mixed in with Jimi Hendrix and their own take on The Beatles and finishing in style with Radiohead and Nirvana. Not bad for a funny little Peruvian band. Even Tom was dancing by the end. To top this they decided our table offered the best prospect for post show entertainment and promptly joined us which resulted in a very unusual but hilarious night. Very tempted to move on to another club at 2am we decided that actually this wasnt very sensible in light off the 7am start and so slunk back to our hotel in the early hours.